Thanks, Kate; I made the correction. That's what I get for not doing it promptly, and then having to take a short-cut - I looked at the scrambled cast listing posted here, b/c I couldn't find my playbill. I thought the Romeo I saw looked a little different from the person I saw do Paris.

Sorry on my part too - with the new website, it's really hard to cut n' paste the casting and I often don' have time to edit it to look right.

Here is Macaulay on the 'Greek Triology' program. Given his short tenure here, I think it's a bit cheeky to comment on past conductors (to comment on a conductor/music director' overall performance with an orchestra you really need to see regular performances), but refreshing to hear some honesty about Nilas Martins. I do think he has some great qualities as a partner, but often wonder if the world would have been better enriched had he been able to escape the 'son of' world and be able to branch out more into music and staging, in which from what I understand, he has great talents.

....What makes Romeo + Juliet look like a contemporary work is its casualness about dramatic consistency, its glossing over of the story’s complexities and conflicts, and a slapdash convertible set (by Per Kirkeby) that looks more like a rough granite fortress than the streets and the palazzi of Renaissance Verona. Martins’s ballet rides along on its basic ingredients, Prokofiev’s music and Shakespeare’s play, rather than exploring them.

Maybe it's a British/US thing, but someone needs to point out to Macaulay that toes shoes is not a correct term in the US. They are POINTE shoes (not POINT as the NY Times has frequently been letting slip these days). The NY Times is too high class a paper and Macaulay too good a writer to make such mistakes, because to call them toe shoes gives his writing a bit of an amateurish sheen:

More Robbins at NYCB...reading this review again reminds me that Benjamin Millepied has been conspicuously absent from the casting this season. He's one of the company's best Robbins' dancers and so I really hope that he overcomes whatever is keeping him from the stage.

It's a beautiful sunny day today. I am still thinking about last week in New York City and how wonderful it would be to be in the Park (Central Park) and to be able to see another wonderful performance tonight. I am thinking about being happy and having fun.

I remember several performances that I saw by the NYCB and I get a sunny day, happy day feeling.

I am not very familiar with the NYCB dancers but Ashley Bouder comes to mind immediately. I remember watching her and thinking that she resembles the amazing Natalia Osipova--both being joyous bundles of energy and talent. In a recent review Alastair Macaulay recalls once seeing Ashley Bouder.

"...at the end of an entirely distinguished account of City Ballet’s “Three Masters” triple bill — young, small Ashley Bouder made her commanding debut in the leading role. Talk about energy! The technical demands of this part are staggering, yet Ms. Bouder etched every step burningly into the score, and at the end looked ready for more. Remarkably, she danced the ballet with a powerful overall sense of its architecture, shading its moods and finding its shadows."

Mr. Macaulay also makes some general comments about George Balanchine's "Serenade" which I really like.

"This, the most beloved Balanchine work of all, is also the most structurally democratic ballet he ever made, with principals, soloists and corps all intermingling, and each corps girl commanding the space around her while sharing steps that are usually a star’s prerogative."

I saw both the retiring Kyra Nichols (I stayed an extra two days to see her) and Darci Kistler in "Serenade". They were both wonderful.

Still what accounts for the happiness that I feel when I think about last week's dancing ?

It Has To Do With George Balanchine And Jerome Robbins' Ability To Take High Art And Make It Joyous.

It Has To Do With The NYCB Dancers' Love Of And Pleasure In Doing What They Are Doing And Their Ability To Convey This To Us.

It Has To Do With Brilliant Technical Dancing And Genius Inspired Dance Material.

There was poetically beautiful strutting around the stage and joyful takes on traditional folk dancing and 'good-times' jigging.

Then there was that wonderful tribute to Fred Astaire, "I'm Old Fashioned" !

Fred Astaire's old movie,"You Were Never Lovelier", with Rita Hayworth was projected on a large screen. I never saw a better example of his dancing as he joyfully floated across the screen. It was so good that it was projected again (I think that it was the same sequence) at the end of the performance. Maria Kowroski and Jenifer Ringer danced along with their partners. With a little bit of 'twinking' what wonderful partners they would have been for Fred Astaire.

It sounds as if Wheeldon's final ballet as Choreographer in Residence is a huge success:

Quote:

The Night Christopher Wheeldon Met Oscar Wilde

By JENNIFER DUNNINGNY TimesPublished: June 11, 2007

Christopher Wheeldon’s new work, “The Nightingale and the Rose,” is mysterious, unwieldy and haunting. It is also one of his most beautiful and daringly imaginative works. But be warned: “Nightingale” may break your heart.

This strange little ballet, given its world premiere by New York City Ballet on Friday at the New York State Theater, retells in stylized movement an Oscar Wilde fairy tale in which a nightingale agrees to bring a student a red rose for the spoiled young professor’s daughter whom he loves. The bird flies through a nighttime garden, at first finding rose trees bearing only yellow and white blossoms. The trees direct her to a red-rose tree, but one too withered from winter to produce.

Two tales retoldNYCB’s The Nightingale and the Rose, ABT’s Sleeping Beauty

....With The Nightingale and the Rose, which premiered last Friday at New York City Ballet, Christopher Wheeldon has come up with a rarity, a new fairy-tale ballet. Even rarer, he’s made a piece of poetry for the stage. .... In a single act, Wheeldon and his collaborators create a mood and a look — a dream message about how little we understand the cost of beauty.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum